In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi! long time listener first time caller. i am the CTO of an early startup with 15 employees (12 engineers). 3 months ago, we hired a new engineer whose output is quite low compared to other engineers on the team. i have brought this up with him many times and tried to coach him on his debugging skills, time management skills, etc. After months of this, I am not seeing any change in output and am growing frustrated. At this point, I suspect that the engineer is just spending very little time on their tasks compared to others on the team (who admittedly often work late into the night). I don’t want to fire the engineer or micromanage his schedule, but am concerned that their slowness will impact our culture and product. Do you have any ideas on how I could help this engineer improve? Howdy fellas, I started my first SWE job out of college at a startup in the bay area and work in a team of three. Myself, my technical manager, and one other developer who comes from an adjacent field. I came three years of interning as a developer at a very relaxed company with 3000+ employees. I’m finding I have a lot more ownership over my work now than ever before and I really enjoy that! What I don’t enjoy is watching my manager run around like a headless chicken. Between managing all our jira boards, creating POC’s for a complete redesign of our core services, interviewing candidates, planning features for our existing services, and doing regular sprint work they have too much to do and not nearly enough time for all of it. This results in many things that are critical getting scrambled, forgotten, miscommunicated, or just dropped for lack of time on their part. I’ve tried to take some of the small tasks from them that aren’t necessarily a manager’s job such as managing the jira board and help desk tickets. Unfortunately they insist that they don’t want me to take over small tasks like that because they can handle it, but the same issues from them being overloaded persist. I think the team over all would be a lot more effective if they were able to focus in on particular tasks, but since they won’t let me help what else can I do?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Love the podcast, love the banter and jokes, keep up the great work! Now, for my predicament: Good news: I just got my first job at a FAANG! Bad news: I’m coming in at the lowest level of software engineering despite being in my mid-30’s and nearly 10 years of non-FAANG experience. Given that it is my first Big Tech™ company, I understand being down-leveled, but I did not expect to be downleveled THIS much. I’m glad to have finally “hit the big leagues”, but I’m not thrilled that I’m on equal footing with a fresh college graduate. Hurt feelings aside, what is the best Soft Skills advice on how to catch up to the mid-30’s engineers who joined a FAANG fresh out of college? My plan is to tell my aspirations to my manager once I start and see how they can help me perform as well as possible in order to promote quickly, but I can see how that might come off as greedy or entitled. What do you think? Should I do anything about a lazy tech lead? Since covid and working from home, my tech lead went from a frantic micromanager to a lazy coaster. They seem to do 1-2 hours of work per day. They set their slack status to ‘away’ so you can’t tell if they are at their desk or not. They’ve stopped coding completely, but we have an excellent PM so there isn’t much else for them to do. Sometimes during stand-up you can clearly hear them driving their car. Even asking them for help/advice on slack can mean several hours waiting for a response. Management hasn’t noticed because we are a large team who all work really hard, so the feature output is still high. My dilemma: do I count myself lucky that they are no longer micromanaging and keep my mouth shut? Better the devil you know etc. Or, do I gather some evidence and tell their boss? I could be learning so much more from an engaged tech lead, and the team might feel less toxic. Final doozy: due to some incredible stock market gains I have some heavy golden handcuffs so #1 priority is keeping my own job and not creating an enemy that gets me fired.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work in a squad that has been slow in delivering. Squad leadership (including myself) concluded we need a staff engineer (one level above senior engineer) to help guide tech directions and to support other engineers. Unfortunately we have received only a single applicant- senior engineer “Brett” who’s already on the team. Brett is a good engineer and has a lot of great qualities - but falls short of the “staff” level. Our tech lead “Chris” doesn’t think Brett is suitable due to bad technical decisions Brett has made in the past. Chris also thinks Brett should have been discouraged from applying in the first place. (Brett’s manager is outside the team so has less visibility on what’s happening inside the squad) We’re suddenly in a bind. If we give Brett the role we are in the same situation as before but having to pay him more. If we don’t give him the role we run the risk of losing him in this environment - which would be very bad as he is a good engineer! Should our decision be down to how Brett interviews? What could have been done differently? I recently did some extensive planning for a feature with a back-end engineer where we negotiated what the GraphQL api would look like. As I was finishing up my feature work, I realized that they departed from that plan and didn’t tell me. Now the feature is late. They’re having to make adjustments because the departure from the spec made it impossible for the front-end to handle the data. I’m having to do more work because they used a completely different architecture than what we discussed. What’s even more frustrating is that the end result on the backend is going to be exactly the design that I initially proposed (this is documented), which the backend engineer shot down when I proposed it. I feel angry that they dismissed my technical expertise. This has also eroded my faith in collaborating with this person. Retro’s coming up. How would you approach retro? What outcome do I even want here? I don’t think more process is going to be helpful (I spent 6-8 hours on the planning portion of this feature). I am starting to wonder if my perception as a primarily front-end engineer prevents the back-end engineers from lending me credibility.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Is it possible to move too fast and do you believe in too much enthusiasm? I am one of the youngest member of the team and am always willing to start new projects and balance a few different things. Is there a point where this can start hurting my career? I’ve gotten bumped in compensation fairly, almost 25% raise since I first started. My career goal is to stay on the programming side but want to become a possible trainer for newer engineers/devs. Listener Michael asks, I’m a backend engineer in an engineering/coding role with a small bit of SRE type work. I love the work as I get to dig deep into tech we use and have become subject a matter expert on databases within the company. I really like my team and my manager in particular, and get to learn a lot every week. My manager is leaving my team to lead a new team within the company that is focused on the company’s SaaS offering and I’ve been given the option of joining this new team if I wish. I like their managerial style and how they have helped me with my career progression so far. However, I’d be doing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) work. I’m not sure if I’m ready yet to commit to being an SRE and code less/focus more on ensuring the reliability of mission critical production systems. I don’t know how easy it would be to switch back to more of a coding role in a years time or if it would pigeonhole me into that type of role. Have you got any advice?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently joined a new company that pays me much better and has much better engineering practices than my previous job. I referred a great engineer who was hired on a different team. Then, another engineer from my old job applied for MY team and is currently being interviewed for the role. This engineer is one of the reasons I left my former company! They have an impressive resume and interview well, but are unable to complete even the most basic tasks and have no interest in improving their skills. They asked me to put in a good word with my tech lead, but if anything, I want to encourage my tech lead NOT to hire them. I’m not a part of the interviewing process but I feel an obligation to let my tech lead know just how bad this developer is. Help? Thanks for thinking I’m neat! I think you are pretty neat too! In my most recent 121, my manager asked me to give some feedback on another colleague on whether I thought they would make a good Engineering Manager. My genuine thoughts about my colleague are that they’re pretty good technically, they have good communication skills, are friendly, and just generally a good team player. Outside of work, we’re pretty good friends and so I really want to see them succeed. However, I can’t shake the feeling that they wouldn’t necessarily be a good Engineering Manager and I can’t figure out why. What are some other (not so obvious) qualities that you think are important for EMs, since on paper, I would think they tick a lot of the boxes.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi! Thanks so much for all the work you do to put this show out, it’s kept me sane the past year. To sum up my problem…I’m aware this is going to sound like a slightly bananas thing to complain about, but my team’s tech lead is superhumanly productive. About 8 months ago, we hired Sarah. I can’t overstate how awesome Sarah is, but, well, in some ways that’s the problem. My team already suffers from under-resourcing. Rather than pushing back on unrealistic requests, Sarah will churn out 90% of the work required by working crazy hours so that we make the deadline. She always shares the credit and plays up even the smallest contribution any of the rest of us made, so again, that’s not at all the issue. For context, my team doesn’t have a manager, and our leaders are super high up the org chart. The problem is that now leadership expects this velocity from the team all the time, not realizing that this it relies on Sarah’s definitely-unsustainable level of productivity. Many other teams in our org are struggling to deliver due to the same resource constraints we face, so now their work is being lumped on our team as well, because the perception is that we’re The Team That Can Handle It. We’ve already lost one team member this year due to burnout, and the pace just keeps increasing. Additionally, I feel like this undermines leadership’s trust in my opinions. Leadership sometimes asks me how long a given thing will take. I’ll give an honest answer, but then when Sarah delivers the thing much faster by working 14-hour days, it makes it look like I’ve been sandbagging my estimates. How do I approach this? I’ve thought about explaining my concerns to Sarah in a 1:1, but I feel like I’d just come across as lazy and whiny…for all I know, she thinks we all should work like she does, although she’d definitely be too polite to say so outright. Are there any other options, or is this a :partyquityourjob: situation? Hello Hosts! I love the podcast and its light and humorous tone on a not so light subject. Ours is a small team with just 2 engineers in a mid-sized company. I joined recently as a senior engineer. The other person was hired for the same role a few months after me. The problem is that this other engineer doesn’t seem to posses senior level skill-set. I often find them making obvious mistakes and struggling to understand user stories. On most occasions they aren’t even able to finish their work, let alone making technical design decisions. I tried to bring this up in a casual way with them, and they seemed to get a bit touchy and defensive about it and they also seem to have a difficult time in making honest conversations about issues. So I never brought this up again. This situation of them not being able to carry out their expected responsibilities is taxing me a lot as I have to pick up the things they mess up in addition to my job. If this was from a person at a much junior level, that would be understandable. But this doesn’t make any sense to me. I am not very comfortable with the idea of ratting them out to the manager and seeming like a non-team player, but I am also afraid that I cannot put up with them for long while also still maintaining my sanity. If you were in my situation, may I know what would you do differently and how would you deal with this person? Thanking you!

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I wanted to know if listing past offers (as a brand name signal) on your resume will help or hurt you during the resume screening and interview stages? I am an SQA engineer at one of the FAANGS, and I feel inadequate in my position; I get the gist QAs are not valued much. Essentially I got into this domain early in my career, and I find moving out of this role difficult. My long-term goal is to get into a PM role. Is that even possible, or should I first switch to the Dev role to build a better foundation? Help me. I am lost.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey guys, a long time listener here, I love the show. I’ve recently joined an early-stage startup with a tiny engineering team. It’s like most startups at this stage, there’s some chaos and a lot to figure out. It’s exactly what I like about startups. In the past years, I’ve been working on the very same kind of software we’re building now. I have a ready answer for many questions we might have, I’ve seen some things go badly and others work great. I’m eager to help the team deliver. But I also don’t want to be seen as the know-it-all jerk that tells everyone how to do their job. I have respect for my team and want to contribute. How do I use my experience without annoying my colleagues? Thanks for sharing your wisdom (I hope for 101% of it). Listener Andy asks, I moved to company A and it’s been 6 months I am constantly getting interview requests, Gave an interview and got a 30% rise moved to Company B, Now within 6 months the same thing happened, Gave an interview at Company C and got the job with 30% raise. what should I do? will it affect my long term career growth

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am working at my first job as a software engineer for 2 1/2 years now. I really enjoy working as a programmer and I’m super excited about the tech industry in general. However, sometimes I feel like I’m too excited about everything. I spent a lot of time reading blog posts, watching tutorials or taking online courses. I think about what books to read and what languages to learn all the time. Not everything but a big part of it happens during my working hours. While I know that “loving to learn” in general is considered a positive trait, I feel like I might take it a bit too far and I should focus more on the actual tasks I have - especially, because I think my coworkers spend much less time keeping up to date with everything. What is a reasonable amount of time to spent on these things during working hours and beyond? How do I know I spend too much time not working on my actual tasks? How can I make sure I learn the right things that are useful to my career? Love the show and wish you the best. Thanks for your advice! I landed a new job that nearly tripled my salary realative to the job I’m about to leave (yes, I was horribly underpaid)! The stories and tips from this podcast really helped me out but I also landed this job through Hired.com (the podcast sponsor). Any good tips regarding leaving a job when you know your boss will be furious that you’re leaving? Also, should I tell my boss which company I’m going to when he asks (he definitely will)? Show Notes Tom7, the most amazing YouTuber of all time: https://www.youtube.com/c/suckerpinch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTBAW-Eh0tM - anagraphs

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Sara asks, How can I deal with favoritism towards informal leaders in a group? The group is losing group intelligence because the informal leader’s reasoning and direction is favored. Example: when member A propose an argument is dismissed, but when the informal leader proposes the same argument it is cherished. How do I react to the question “why didn’t you do it this way” for features already in production? I am frustrated by being asked that. I got scolded for an idea that turned out to be bad after I implemented it (in production), although I asked the Lead for his opinion ahead of time. As soon as trouble came up a.k.a performance issue in production, he pointed the finger at me. Lost all kinds of respect for him.